Behind the WumDrop And Makro Deal

Massmart-owned retailer Makro, this week announced that it has acquired a majority stake in the on-demand courier service, WumDrop.

WumDrop can be incorporated into retailers’ e-commerce offering, allowing customers to select WumDrop as their delivery method for their online shopping. The service allows users to request the pickup and dropoff of packages via their phones and is currently available in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Durban.

The startup was co-founded by Simon Hartley and his business partner at the time, Roy Mathieu Borole in 2014, in an attempt to address the issues they experienced with poor delivery of their online shopping.

Although the value of the deal is yet undisclosed, Hartley said in an article on Bizcommunity, that they were excited about the partnership which, Hartley said, will strengthen their mission to “eradicate the anxiety one normally experiences while waiting for a delivery; that your delivery guy might or might not get to you at some point in the giant window between 9am and 5pm“.

“WumDrop just works. Their tech is extremely flexible and solid, allowing integration with any retailer big or small, and after extensive testing, it was apparent to us that their solution provided the kind of transparency, speed and flexibility for our customers that we just couldn’t say no to,” said Dean Bauer, Makro supply chain director in the Bizcommunity article.

Here are 8 things you need to know about the deal and the startup behind it.

ABOUT THE DEAL
1. Makro piloted WumDrop in 16 stores in Durban, Cape Town, Pretoria, and Johannesburg, prior to the deal, with positive initial results.

2. The company said the acquisition will help it shrink the window between a customer order and delivery from three days to three hours for clients located within 20km of a Makro store.

3. According to WumDrop, the deal will also help the company offer lower and simpler, flat prices across the board and will benefit both new and existing WumDrop customers, which include The Foschini Group, Bottles, Standard Bank, and Zando.

4. WumDrop is now busy integrating with Builder’s Warehouse and Mass Discounters, and deliveries from those companies will start in 2018, the group said.

ABOUT WUMDROP
​1. The startup offers multiple delivery service levels, including on-demand, after-hours and same-day delivery at discounted rates for business customers.

2. Earlier this year, WumDrop also launched their Deliver 2 Me service, the world’s first delivery solution that delivers to the real-time location of your mobile phone, according to publication The Newspaper, with The Foschini Group.

3. WumDrop was developed out of WumWum, a diaper delivery company founded by Hartley, who also founded The Grilled Cheese Club, an online service that delivers grilled cheese sandwiches in-and-around Woodstock.

4. The Cape Town- and Johannesburg-based startup was the overall winner at the MTN Business App of the Year Awards 2015 and also took home the best enterprise app award, according to ITWeb.